This happens because when your process attempted to create a database, some other process was using the ‘model’ database. It’s possible that someone started a session with ‘model’ via SQL Server Management Studio, or maybe a SCOM process was using it.

Anyways, the important thing is that you find the smoking gun to unlock your process and make sure that this doesn’t happen again...

If you can repro the problem, you can find the culprit simply by running: ‘EXEC sp_who2’, you will get a list of all the processes/users that use any database in your server, including the ‘model’ database.

Or, you can run the following query in order to get info on the processes that use the ‘model’ database:

However, if your process is running somewhere in the cloud, it might be helpfully to get the blame list programmatically. Here’s a sample code that detects ‘model lock’ type error and adds details on the culprit processes to the exception.

The code above creates a database, incase of an error it calls HandleModelLockException. The latter check if the exception (or one of its InnerExceptions) indicates ‘model locked’ type of error. In that case, it calls ModelDatabaseLockedAnalysis.Analyze that queries for the processes that use the ‘model’ database. Than, it simply add the list to the exception.